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t> H O^ 



FRANCE AT WAR 

ON THE FRONTIER OF CIVILIZATION 



FRANCE AT 
WAR 

On the Frontier of Civilization 



BY 

RUDYARD KIPLING 




Garden City New York 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

1915 



DC34-0 



Copyright , 1915, 61/ 
RuDYARD Kipling 

^// n^/^f^ reserved, including that of 

translation into foreign languages, 

including the Scandinavian 



By eschang-e 
Army <S: Navy Olub 
JUN 2 2 1940 



IV3 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Poem: France 3 

I. On the Frontier of Civili- 
zation 9 

II. The Nation's Spirit and a 

New Inlieritance . . 31 

III. Battle Spectacle and a 

Review 50 

IV. The Spirit of the People . 72 

V. Life in Trenches on the 

Mountain Side . . .91 

VI. The Common Task of a 

Great People . . .111 




o'\ 



FRANCE AT WAR 

ON THE FRONTIER OF CIVILIZATION 



FRANCE* 

BY RUDYARD KIPLING 

Brol'C to cvcnj known nnscJiance, lifted over 

all 
By the light .sane joi/ of life, the buekler of 

the Gaul, 
Furious in luxuri/, mereiless in toih 
Terrible with strength that draws from her 

tireless soil. 
Strictest judge of her own worth, gentlest of 

men's mind. 
First to follow truth and last to leave old 

truths belli nd — 
France beloved of every soul that loves ils 

fellow-kind. 



♦First published June !2-t, 1913. Copyright, 1013, 
by Rudyard Kipling. 

3 



4 FRAJS'CE 

Ere our birth (^reniemberest thou?) side 

by side we hiy 
Fretting in tlie womb of Rome to begin 

the fray. 
Ere men knew our tongues apart, our one 

taste was known — 
Eaeh must mouki the other's fate as he 

wrought his own. 
To this end we stirred mankind till all 

earth was oiu-s, 
Till our world-end strifes began wayside 

thrones and powers. 
Puppets that we made or broke to bar 

the other's path — 
Necessary, outpost folk, hirelings of our 

wrath. 
To this end we stormed the seas, tack for 

tack, and burst 
Through the doorways of new worlds, 

doubtful which was lirst. 
Hand on hilt (rememberest thou?), ready 

for the blow, 



FRANCE 5 

Sure whatever else we met we should 

meet our foe. 
Spurred or haulked at ev'ry stride by the 

other's strength, 
So we rode the ages down and every ocean's 

length; 
Where did you refrain from us or we re- 
frain from you? 
Ask the wave that has not watched war 

between us two. 
Others held us for a while, but with 

weaker charms, 
These we quitted at the call for each 

other's arms. 
Eager toward the known delight, equally 

we strove. 
Each the other's mystery, terror, need, 

and love. 
To each other's open court with our 

proofs we came, 
Where could we find honoiu* else or men 

to test the claim? 



6 FRANCE 

From each other's throat we wrenched 

valour's last reward, 
That extorted word of praise gasped 

'twixt lunge and guard. 
In each other's cup we poured mingled 

blood and tears. 
Brutal joys, unmeasured hopes, intoler- 
able fears. 
All that soiled or salted life for a thousand 

years. 
Proved beyond the need of proof, matched 

in every clime, 
O companion, we have lived greatly 

through all time: 
Yoked in knowledge and remorse now we 

come to rest. 
Laughing at old villainies that time has 

turned to jest. 
Pardoning old necessity no pardon can 

efface — 
That undying sin we shared in Rouen 

market-place. 



FRANCE 7 

Now we watch the new years shape, won- 
dering if they hold 
Fiercer hghting in their hearts than we 

launched of old. 
Now we hear new voices rise, question, 

boast or gird, 
As we raged (rememberest thou?) when 

our crowds were stirred. 
Now we count new keels afloat, and new 

hosts on land. 
Massed liked ours (rememberest thou?) 

when our strokes were planned. 
We were schooled for dear life sake, to 

know each other's blade: 
What can blood and iron make more than 

we have made? 
We have learned by keenest use to know 

each other's mind: 
What shall blood and iron loose that we 

cannot bind? 
We who swept each other's coast, sacked 

each other's home. 



8 FRANCE 

Since the sword of Brennus clashed on 

the scales at Rome, 
Listen, court and close again, wheeling 

girth to girth. 
In the strained and bloodless guard set 

for peace on earth. 

Broke to every known mischance, lifted over 
all 

By the light sane joy of life, the buckler of 
the Gaul, 

Furious in luxury, merciless in toil. 

Terrible with strength renewed from a tire- 
less soil. 

Strictest judge of her own worth, gentlest of 
mens mind, 

First to face the truth and last to leave old 
truths behind, 

France beloved of every soul that loves or 
serves its kind. 



ON THE FRONTIER OF 
CIVILIZATION 

"It's a pretty park," said the French 
artillery oflScer. "We've done a lot 
for it since the owner left. I hope 
he'll appreciate it when he comes 
back." 

The car traversed a winding drive 
through woods, between banks em- 
bellished with little chalets of a rustic 
nature. At first, the chalets stood 
their full height above ground, sug- 
gesting tea-gardens in England. Fur- 
ther on they sank into the earth tilL 
at the top of the ascent, only their 



10 FRANCE AT WAR 

solid brown roofs showed. Torn 
branches drooping across the drive- 
way, with here and there a scorched 
patch of undergrowth, explained the 
reason of their modesty. 

The chateau that commanded these 
glories of forest and park sat boldly on 
a terrace. There was nothing wrong 
with it except, if one looked closely, a 
few scratches or dints on its white 
stone walls, or a neatly drilled hole 
under a flight of steps. One such 
hole ended in an unexploded shell. 
"Yes," said the officer. "They ar- 
rive here occasionally." 

Something bellowed across the folds 
of the wooded hills ; something grunted 
in reply. Something passed overhead, 
querulously but not without dignity. 
Two clear fresh barks joined the 



FRANCE AT WAR 11 

chorus, and a man moved lazily in the 
direction of the guns. 

**WeIl. Suppose we come and look 
at things a little," said the command- 
ing officer. 

AN OBSERVATION POST 

There was a specimen tree — a tree 
worthy of such a park — the sort of 
tree visitors are always taken to ad- 
mire. A ladder ran up it to a plat- 
form. What little wind there was 
swayed the tall top, and the ladder 
creaked like a ship's gangway. A 
telephone bell tinkled 50 foot over- 
head. Two invisible guns spoke fer- 
vently for half a minute, and broke off 
like terriers choked on a leash. We 
climbed till the topmost platform 
swayed sicklily beneath us. Here one 



12 FR.\XCE AT WAR 

found a rustic shelter, always of the 
tea-garden pattern, a table, a map, 
and a little window wreathed with 
living branches that gave one the 
first view of the Devil and all his 
works. It was a stretch of open 
country, with a few sticks like old 
toi^th-brushes which had once been 
trees round a farm. The rest was 
yellow grass, barren to all appearance 
as the veldt. 

*'The grass is yellow because they 
have used gas here," said an otHcer. 

** Their trenches are . You can 

see for yourself." 

The guns in the woods began again. 
They seemed to have no relation to 
the regularly spaced bursts of smoke 
along a little smear in the desert earth 
two thousand vards awav — no con- 



FRANCE AT WAR 13 

noctlon at all with the strong voices 
overhead coining and going. It was 
as impersonal as the (h*ive of the sea 
along a breakwater. 

Thns it went: a panse — a gather- 
ing of sound Hke the race of an incom- 
ing wave; then the high-fiung heads 
of breakers spouting white up the face 
of a groyne. Suddenly, a seventh 
wave broke and spread the shape of 
its foam like a plume overtopping all 
I he others. 

"That's one of our torpilleurs — 
what 3 on call trench-sweepers," said 
the observer among the whispering 
leaves. 

Some one crossed the platform to 
consult the map with its ranges. A 
blistering outbreak of white smokes 
rose a little beyond the large i)lume. 



14 FK\\\ K AT W VK 

It \v^5 as though the tide had struck 
a reef out yonder. 

Then a new w^ivv of tremendous 
volume Hftevi itself out of a hiU that 
foUoweil. Si^Tuolxxly lau^jrhtxl. Kvi- 
dentlN' the voi<.v was knowu. 

"That is not for us/' a giumer said. 

" They ai\^ Wiu^ wakeii up frvMU *' 

he nanu\l a distant Freneh vxvsition. 
"S<> and so is attendiui: to then\ thert\ 
^Ve gv> on with our usual work. Iah^K " 
.Vuother torpiUeur." 

'*VHK rvkuvkian" 

AiT^un a big phuue iw^e; and ai::;un 
the lighter shells brv^ke at their ap- 
[xnntixl distan^^v lx\vond it. The 
smoke di^xi away on that stretch of 
triMich, as tl\e f«.\uu of a swell dies 
in the auirle of a harlxnir walk aiul 



FKAMK AT WAlx 15 

broke out afrosh half a luilo lowor 
down. In its apparent laziness, in its 
awful deliberation, and its quiek 
spasms of wrath, it was more like the 
work of waves than of men; and our 
high platform's gentle sway and glide 
was exaetly the motion o( a ship drift- 
ing with us toward that shore. 

"The usual work. ()nly the usual 
work," the oftieer explained. "Some- 
times it is here. Sometimes above or 
below us. 1 have been here sinee 
May." 

A little sunshine floodtHi the strieken 
landseape and made its chemieal yel- 
low look more foul. A detaehment 
of men moved out on a road whieh ran 
toward the Freneh trenehes, and 
then vanished at the foot of a little 
rise. Cither men appeared moving 



16 FRANCE AT WAR 

toward us with that concentration 
of purpose auJ bearing shown in 
both Armies when — dinner is at hand. 
They looked Hke peopk" who had been 
digging hard. 

*'The same work. Always the 
same work I" the officer said. "And 
you could walk from here to the sea 
or to Switzerland in that ditch — and 
you'll find the same work going on 
everywhere. It isn't war." 

"It's better than that," said an- 
other. ** It's the eating-up of a people. 
They come and they fill the trenches 
and they die. and they die; and they 
send more and those die. We do the 
same, of course, but — look I" 

He pointed to the large ileliberate 
smoke-heads renewing themselves 
alouir that vcllowod beach. "That is 



FRANCE AT WAR 17 

the frontier of civilization. They 
have all civilization against them — 
those brutes j^onder. It's not the 
local victories of the old wars that 
we're after. It's the barbarian — all 
the barbarian. Now, you've seen 
the whole thing in little. Come and 
look at our children." 

SOLDIERS IN CAVES 

We left that tall tree whose fruits 
are death ripened and distributed at 
the tingle of small bells. The ob- 
server returned to his maps and calcu- 
lations; the telephone-boy stiffened 
up beside his exchange as the ama- 
teurs went out of his life. Some one 
called down through the branches to 
ask who was attending to — Belial, 
let us say, for I could not catch the 



IS FKANCK AT WAK 

i^un's uaino. It sooiuod to boloiii: to 
that torritio now voioo wliioh had 
Uftovl itself for the soeoud or third 
time. It appoarod from tho reply 
that if l>olial talked too loui: he would 
be dealt with from another point 
miles away. 

The trivps we eame down to stv 
were at rest in a ehain of eaves w hic'h 
had beiiun life as quarries and had 
been tit ted up by the army for its own 
uses. There were underi^round eor- 
ridors, ante-ehambers. rotundas, and 
ventilatiui: shafts with a bewiUierini: 
play of erv>ss liirhts, so that wherever 
you Kx^ked you saw Cioya's pic'tures 
of men-at-arms. 

Kvery soldier has some of the oKl 
maid in hin\. and rejoiees in all the 
iradizets and deviees of his own in- 



FRANCE AT WAR 19 

volition. Ooath and wonnding come 
by natniv, but to lio dry, sloop soft, 
and koo[) yonrsolf oloan by foro- 
tliouglit and oontrivanco is art, and 
in all things tlio Fronchmau is glo- 
riously an artist. 

Moroovor, tlio Fronoli oflioors 
sooni as niothor-koon on thoir nion 
as thoir nion aro brothor-t'ond ot* 
thoui. May bo tho possossivo form 
of addross: *'Mon g:ou6ral," " 



t^' 



UlOU 



capitaino," holps tho idoa, whioh our 
uion oloko in othor and ourtor phrasos. 
And thoso soldiors, liko ours, had 
boon woldod for months in ono fur- 
naco. As an otiioor said: "Half our 
ordors now nood not bo givon. K\- 
porionoo makos us think togothor." 
I boliovo, too, that if a Fronoh privato 
has an idoa — and tliov aro full of 



•^O FRANCE AT WAR 

ideas — it reaches his C. O. quicker 
than it does with us. 

THE SENTINEL HOUNDS 

The overwhehning impression was 
the brilHant health and vitaHty of 
these men and the quaHty of their 
breeding. They bore themselves 
with swing and rampant delight in 
life, while their voices as they talked 
in the side-caverns among the stands 
of arms were the controlled voices of 
civilization. Yet, as the lights 
pierced the gloom they looked like 
bandits dividing the spoil. One pic- 
ture, though far from war, stays 
with me. A perfectly built, dark- 
skinned young giant had peeled him- 
self out of his blue coat and had 
brought it down with a swish upon 



FRANCE AT WAR 21 

the shoulder of a half-stripped com- 
rade who was kneeling at his feet 
busy with some footgear. They 
stood against a background of semi- 
luminous blue haze, through which 
glimmered a pile of coppery straw 
half covered by a red blanket. By 
divine accident of light and pose it 
was St. Martin giving his cloak to the 
beggar. There were scores of pic- 
tures in these galleries — notably a 
rock-hewn chapel where the red of 
the cross on the rough canvas altar- 
cloth glowed like a ruby. Further 
inside the caves we found a row of 
little rock-cut kennels, each inhabited 
by one wise, silent dog. Their duties 
begin at night with the sentinels and 
listening-posts. "And believe me," 
said a proud instructor, "my fellow 



22 FRANCE AT WAR 

hero knows the difference between 
the noise of our shells and the Boche 
shells/' 

^Yhen we came out into the open 
again there were gooii opportunities 
for this study. Voices and wings 
met and passed in the air, and, per- 
haps, one strong young tree had not 
been bending quite so far across the 
picturesque park-drive when we tirst 
went that way. 

"Oh. yes." said an othcer, ** shells 
have to fall somewhere, and," he 
added with tine toleration, "it is, 
after all, against us that the B«.x^he 
directs them. But come you and 
look at my dug-out. It's the most 
superior of all possible dug-outs." 

"No. Come and look at our mess. 
It's the Ritz of these parts." And 



FRANCE AT WAR 28 

they joyously told how thoy had got, 
or procured, the various fittings and 
the ek^gancies, whik^ hands stretched 
out of the gloom to shake, and men 
nodded welcome and greeting all 
through that cheery brotherhood in 
the woods. 

WORK IN THE FIELDS 

The voices and the wings were still 
busy after lunch, when the car 
slipped past the tea-houses in the 
drive, and came into a country where 
women and children worked among 
the crops. There were large raw 
shell holes by the wayside or in 
the midst of fields, and often a 
cottage or a villa had been smashed 
as a bonnet-box is smashed by an 
umbrella. That must be part of 



^4 FK-^xci: AT w KK 

Belial's work when he Mlow>> so 
truculently aniong the hills to the 
north. 

We were Uvki:.:: lor a town that 
lives under shell-tirv. The rt^iruhvr 
road to it was n^^x^rtevi unhealtlij' 
— iiot that the women and ehiUinni 
seemed to ean\ AVo t^v^k b>\va>s 
of which cXTtaiu ox^xv>evi heights 
and «.vrners wert^ lightly blindevi by 
wiud-bnvkes of drit\i trxx^to^"*^. llort^ 
the shell holes worx^ ratlior thick on 
the ground. But the wonu n and the 
children and the old R\en went on 
with their work with the cattle and 
the 0T\^p>: and where a house had 
Ihvu bi\'»keu by shells the rubbish 
was cvlhvttxi in a neat pile, and where 
a rvxnu or two still rtMuaiutxi us;ibU\ 
it was iuhabitcvi. and the tatteiwl 



ruvvNoi: at w ak "co 

Nvindow-cnirtaius tluttoiwl as proiully 
as any tlai;'. And time was wIumi I 
nst\l to «.lonoiiiU'o youiii;- Trarn'o bo- 
(.\iiiso it tried to kill itself beneath my 
ear wheels; and the fat oUl women 
who erossed roads withont warnini:; 
and the speeially deaf old men who 
slept in earts on the wroni;* side of 
the road! Now, 1 eonld take otV 
n\y hat to e\ery single sonl of them, 
bnt that one eannot traverse a whole 
land bareheaded. The nearer nno 

eame to onr town the fewer were the 
people, till at last we halted in a 
well-bnilt snbnrb of paved streets 
where there was no life at all. 

A WKKCKF.n TOWN 

The stillness was as terrible as 
the spread of the qniek bnsy weeds 



26 FRANCE AT WAR 

between the paving-stones; the air 
smelt of pounded mortar and crushed 
stone; the sound of a footfall echoed 
like the drop of a pebble in a well. 
At first the horror of wrecked apart- 
ment-houses and big shops laid open 
makes one waste energy in an^^-^'- 
It is not seemly that rooms should 
be torn out of the sides of buildings 
as one tears the soft heart out of 
English bread; that villa roofs should 
lie across iron gates of private ga- 
rages, or that drawing-room doors 
should flap alone and disconnected 
between two emptinesses of twisted 
girders. The eye wearies of the re- 
peated pattern that burst shells make 
on stone walls, as the mouth sickens 
of the taste of mortar and charred 
timber. One quarter of the place 



FRANCE AT WAR 27 

had been shelled nearly level; the 
fagades of the houses stood doorless, 
roofless, and windowless like stage 
scenery. This was near the cathe- 
dral, which is always a favourite 
mark for the heathen. They had 
gashed and ripped the sides of the 
cathedral itself, so that the birds flew 
in and out at will; they had smashed 
holes in the roof; knocked huge 
cantles out of the buttresses, and 
pitted and starred the paved square 
outside. They were at work, too, 
that very afternoon, though I do 
not think the cathedral was their 
objective for the momxcnt. We walked 
to and fro in the silence of the streets 
and beneath the whirring wings over- 
head. Presently, a young woman, 
keeping to the wall, crossed a corner. 



^JS FHANC^E AT WAH 

An old woman oihmuhI a shultiM' 
(how it jarroil!") , ami spoko to hor. 
'V\\c siltMU'O c'IoschI ai;ain, bill il 
soomod to mo thai 1 hoard a sound 
of sini^finix tho sort of ohant ono 
hoars in ni^htmaro-oitios of voicos 
crying from undorixronnd. 

IN THE CATUKDHAL 

*' Nonsonso," said an oilioor. "Who 
should 1)0 singing horo?" Wt^ cir- 
olod tho oathodral again, and saw 
what ])avonuMit-stonos can do against 
tlioir own city, whon tho sholl jorks 
thorn upward. Hut thoro was sing- 
ing aft or all -on tho olhor sido of a 
littlo door in tho flank of tho oatho- 
dral. >Vo lookod in, doubting, and 
saw at loast a hundrod folk, mostly 
womon, who knolt hoforo tlu^ altar 



FRANCE AT WAR 29 

of an un wrecked cliapel. We with- 
drew quietly I'rorrj that Jioly ground, 
and it was not only the eyes of the 
French officers that filled with tears. 
Then there came an old, old thing 
with a prayer-}>ook in her hand, pat- 
tering across tfie square, evidently 
late for service. 

"And who are those women?" I 
asked. 

"Some are caretakers; peoples who 
have still little shops here. (There is 
one quarter where you can buy things.) 
There are many old people, too, who 
will not go away. They are of the 
place, you see." 

"And this bombardment happens 
often?" I said. 

"It happens always. Would you 
like to look at the railway station? 



30 FRANCE AT WAR 

Of course, it has not been so bom- 
barded as the eathedral." 

We went through the gross naked- 
ness of streets without peopk\ till we 
reached the railway station, which 
was very fairly knocked about, but, as 
my friends said, nothing like as nmch 
as the cathedral. Then we had to 
cross the end of a long street down 
which the Boche could see clearly. 
As one glanced up it, one perceived 
how the weeds, to whom men's war 
is the truce of God, had come back 
and were well established the whole 
length of it, watched by the long per- 
spective of open, empty windows. 



II 

THE NATION'S SPIRIT 

AND A np:w inheritance 

We left that stricken but unde- 
feated town, dodged a few miles down 
the roads beside which the women 
tended their cows, and dropped into 
a place on a hill where a Moroccan 
regiment of many experiences was in 
billets. 

They were Mohammedans baf- 
flingly like half a dozen of our Indian 
frontier types, though they spoke 
no accessible tongue. They had, of 
course, turned the farm buildings 
where they lay into a little bit of 

31 



32 



FH VM'K AT \V \i; 



Afrlrn in roloiir :uu\ sinrll. Thrv \\:\d 
boon gnssoil in tlu^ north; shot o\ or 
and shot down, anil sot np to ho 
shoHed ai^ain: and thoir otHoors talkod 
of \orth Afrioan wars that wo had 
novor hoard i>t' snltry chiys ai^ainst 
K>ni;- ochls in tho cK\sort yoars ai;o. 
"Aftorwanl is it not so witli yon 
also? wo got onr host roornits from 
tho trihos wo liavo foni;ht. Thoso 
nion aro ohiUh'on. 'rhi\N- niako no 
tronhh\ rhi\\- only want ti> i;"o wlna-o 
oartridi^os aro hnrnt. riu\N' iivc of 
tho fow raoos to whom tii;hlini;" is 
ploasmv." 

"Ami how loni;- havo you doall 
with thom?" 

**A loni;- timo a loni;- tinu\ I 
holpod to ori;ani/o tlu^ oi>rps. 1 am 
ono of thoso whoso hoart is in Africa." 



FHANrr: at war .5.5 

Iff- sf)ok(t slowly, ;j.lrn(jst, fctftling for fils 
J^'r(trif:li words, and gavft sorrut ordrtr. I 
sijall rj(jt. for^rtf, his c*yf*H as h(! \.\inn-(\ to 
;i liiJ^^f-, hnjwn, A\'r<(<\((: Wkc Mussul- 
ui'.ui liunkcrin^^ down l>f!sidc h'lH ax-xtou- 
Intnii'JiiH. Hi- [lad two sides to his head, 
tliat h(fard(*d, f>iirned, slow-spoken 
offief-r, met aruJ jjarterj with in an 
hour. 

'Vh(t day elosed- ddb-.r an amazing; 
interhidf* in tli(- rrhateau of a dream, 
whif:h was all glassy ponds, stately 
tref'S, anri vistas of white and gold 
saloons. T\\(t proprietor was some- 
f>ody's ehauffeur at the front, and we 
drank to his exeellent fiealtlj; at a 
litth* village in a twilight full of tlje 
[>etrol of many cars and the wholesome 
flavour of healthy troops. '^I'here 
is no hf'tt(*r guirht to f:amp tlian one's 



34 FUANCE AT WAK 

own thoui^litfiil iioso; :iml thoni^li T 
])c)ko(l mine ovorywlioiw in no j)lafo 
thon or later diil it strike tliat vilo 
betraying taint of nndert'eil, nnelean 
men. Ami the same with thi^ horses. 

THE LINE THAT \KVKh' SLEEPS 

It is (lilhenlt to kcvp an edi^e after 
hours of fresh air ami (^\])erienees; 
so one (K>es not gti th(^ most from the 
most interi\stini;" part of the (hiy the 
dinner with tlie loeal hea(hinart(M's. 
Here tht* professionals nuvt the 
Line, the (lunners, the Intelligence 
with stn])efving ])hoto-])lans of tlie 
enemy's trenches; the Supply: the 
Stall", wlu) eolleet and note all things, 
and are very properly ehalVed; and, 
be sure, the Interpreter, who, by force 
of (luestioning prisoners, naturally 



cl<'v<'l()[>s inio a SadducMU'. it is llicir 
III ll(^ ;isi(l( s l() cacli oilier, llic .slan^, 
and I.Ik; lijiM'-wonis wliicli, ii* one unrler- 
sIcxxK insl<*;t(l ol" hlinkirif^ (irowsily 
al, one's philc, would ^iv*- lint <l;i,y's 
Inslory in lillle. \\\\\ lire and llie 
diflienllies of a sislcr fnol. a I'orei^/n; 
tongue eloud <*V(rryl.liin^, and one ^oes 
l(> hillel.s arrn'd a rrnirniur of voie(!S, I lie 
rush of singh; (!ars tiirougli \.\ir. niglil, 
I Ik; f)assag(; of haitalions, ancJ heliind 
il, .'ill, llie eelio of IIk; dee[> voiees 
calling on(; lo IIk; oilier, ;ilong llie line 
llial- wi'Vi'V slee[>s. 

TIk; ridge; willi llie seallcred [>ines 
niiglil linve liidden eliildr(;n al \>\'>iy. 
C(;rbiinly a. Iiorsr- would liave f)een 
f|uiL(; visible, hul, l.lien; was no liini 
of guns. (;xee[>l. a s(;rn;i,[)lion- wliieli 



86 IKANCK .\r \V\l{ 

auiioimiiHl it was forbiiKlon to pass 
that way, as [\\c hatlorv was firing. 
'V\\c Ihh'Iu's inusl lia\r loi>ktHl for 
that hallcMV, [oo. 'V\\c t;roiiiul was 
pitliul willi s\\c\\ \\o\cs o( all cah- 
bres — sonu' o{ thnn as i'rrsh as moU*- 
casts in tlu' misty tlanij) nu>rnini^; 
othcMs whoro the poppirs hail thrown 
from sivtl to tlowor all through tho 
snmnuM". 

"Ami wluM-o Avc \\\c gnns?" I do- 
luandoil at last. 

Thoy wtMi' almost nn<lrr i>no's 
hand. lluMT anummltion in ri'llars 
and dng onts hi\^iih' tluMn. As far 
as c>nc can mako ont, llu' 7.') gnn has 
no prl nanu\ 'V\\c hayomM is lu>salit' 
tho \ irgin of nayi>mu\ hnt tho 7.">. tho 
>vatohfnl nnrso of tho tronohos and 
little sistor of tho Lino, sooms to bo 



FKANri-: AT WAF(, 



:j7 



;i.Iw;i,ys *',s(>ix;i,ril<- <jiiiii/,<'." lOv^-n llio,s(^ 
who love Imt \u's\ do riol iiisisl. I linl slir 
is l)c;j,ulirijl. II<T ifMiils ;«,n- I^'n'ridi 
lo^lc, (lircf'liMss, sifnplir it y, ;ifi<l flir 
H\l\)V(ii\c ^nU of "orf.'isiori.'ilil y." She 
is <'(jij;il lo cvcryl liifi/^ on I Ik- spin- of 
I lie inonirnl. One s^-rs ;infj sliidics 
IIk' frw .•ip[)li,'i,H(('S wliirli rrinkr Imt 
do wli;il, sIm* docs, ;i,nd otk- f<-(ls tlinl, 
any on<^ ronid li}i.v<* inv<*nlrd [icr. 

FAMOJ'H FKKNr'M 7.0 's 

*'As ,'i, iri;j,l l<r of f;irl," sJi,yH a 
c-ornfn;irid.'iiil , ";inyf>ody or, r;illHr\ 
rvcryhody did. TIm' g<'.ncr;i.I idcn, is 
iiUcv snrli ;i,nd sncli sysfcrn, Ifir [>;i,l('nt< 
r)f wliirfi li;id <*xf>ir<d, ut\<\ w*- irrif>rov<*d 
if; tlic hrrccli jirlion, vvilli sli;.dil mod 
ifir'.'ilion, is sonichody clsr's; l!i<* si^dit - 
in^^ is [xrlnips ;i, lilllr sjxtcijil ; ;irid so is 
iJic Inivcrsin/^, f)nl, .it hottorn, it, is 



38 FRANCE AT WAR 

only an assembly of variations and ar- 
rangements. '* 

That, of conrse, is all that S^hakes- 
peare ever got ont of the ali)hal>el. 
The French Artillery make their own 
guns as he made his plays. It is just 
as simple as that. 

*' There is nothing going on for 
the moment; it's too misty," said 
the Commandant. (I fancy tluit 
the Boche, being, as a rule methodical, 
amateurs are introduceil to batteries 
in the Boche's intervals. At least, 
there are hours healthy and unhealthy 
which vary with each position.) "But,'* 
the Commandant reflected a moment, 
*' there is a place — and a distance. 
Let us say . . . *' He gave a 
range. 

The gun -servers stood back w^ith 



FRANCE AT WAR 39 

the })()n:<\ (i()Ji\j:ini)i of the profes- 
fiiou'A Ujr the layrmin who intrudes 
on his mysteries. Other civilians 
hfcui come that way before— had seen, 
and ginned, and complimented and 
gone their way, leaving the gunners 
high up on the hleak hillside Uj grill 
or mildew or freeze for weeks and 
montLs. Then she spoke. Her voice 
was higher pitched, it seemed, than 
ours — with a more shrewish tang to 
the speeding shell, llcr rficoil was as 
swift and as graceful as the shrug of a 
French- woman's shoulders; the empty 
case leaped forth and clanged against 
the trail; the tops of two or three 
pines fifty yards away nodded know- 
ingly to each other, though there was 
no wind. 

"They'll be bothered down below 



40 FRANCE AT WAR 

to know the meaning of our single 
shot. We don't give them one dose 
at a time as a ride/' somebody hmghed. 

We waited in the fragrant silence. 
Nothing came back from the mist 
that clogged the lower grounds, though 
no shell of this war was ever launched 
with more earnest prayers that it 
might do hurt. 

Then they talked about the lives 
of guns; what number of rounds some 
will stand and others will not; how 
soon one can make two good guns out 
of three spoilt ones, and what crazy 
luck sometimes goes with a single 
shot or a blind salvo. 



A shell must fall somewhere, and 
by the law of averages occasionally 



FRANCE AT WAR 41 

lights straight as a liorning pigeon 
on tlif^ on(t spot wFien* it can wreck 
most. Tli(*n (^arth o[)ens for yards 
around, and men must \)() dug out, — 
some merely f>n-at}iless, who shake 
their ears, swc^ar, and earry on, and 
others whose souls iiav(* gorier loose 
among terrors. '^Jliese hav(^ to he 
dealt with as their psychology de- 
mands, and the French officer is a 
good psychologist. ()n(! of thc^m said : 
*'Our national psychology has changed. 
I do not recognize it myself." 
"What made the change?" 
''The IJoche. If he had been qui(*t 
for anotJier twenty yc^ars the world 
must have been his — rotten, but all 
his. Now he is saving the world." 

"How?" 

"Because he has shown us what 



42 FRANCE AT WAR 

Evil is. We — you and I, England and 
the rest — had begun to doubt the exist- 
ence of Evil . The Boche is saving us . " 
Then we had another look at the 
animal in its trench — a little nearer this 
time than before, and quieter on ac- 
count of the mist. Pick up the chain 
anywhere you please, you shall find 
the same observation-post, table, map, 
observer, and telephonist; the same 
always-hidden, always-ready guns; 
and same vexed foreshore of trenches, 
smoking and shaking from Switzerland 
to the sea. The handling of the war 
varies with the nature of the country, 
but the tools are unaltered. One 
looks upon them at last with the same 
weariness of wonder as the eye re- 
ceives from endless repetitions of 
Egyptian hieroglyphics. A long, low 



FRANCE AT WAR 43 

profile, with a lump to one side, means 
the field-gun and its attendant am- 
munition-case; a circle and slot 
stand for an observation -post; the 
trench is a bent line, studded with 
vertical plumes of explosion ; the great 
guns of position, coming and going 
on their motors, repeat themselves 
as scarabs; and man himself is a 
small blue smudge, no larger than a 
foresight, crawling and creeping or 
watching and running among all these 
terrific symbols. 

TRAGEDY OF RHEIMS 

But there is no hieroglyphic for 
Rheims, no blunting of the mind at 
the abominations committed on the 
cathedral there. The thing peers 
upward, maimed and blinded, from 



44 FRANCE AT WAR 

out of the utter wreckage of the Arch- 
bishop's palace on the one side and 
dust-heaps of crumbled houses on the 
other. They shelled, as they still 
shell it, with high explosives and with 
incendiary shells, so that the statues 
and the stonework in places are burned 
the colour of raw flesh. The gargoyles 
are smashed; statues, crockets, and 
spires tumbled; walls split and torn; 
windows thrust out and tracery oblit- 
erated. Wherever one looks at the 
tortured pile there is mutilation and 
defilement, and yet it had never more 
of a soul than it has to-day. 

Inside — (''Cover yourselves, gen- 
tlemen," said the sacristan, "this 
place is no longer consecrated") — 
everything is swept clear or burned 
out from end to end, except two can- 



FRANCE AT WAR 45 

dlesticks in front of the niche where 
Joan of Arc's image used to stand. 
There is a French flag there now. 
[And the last time I saw Rheims 
Cathedral was in a spring twilight, 
when the great west window glowed, 
and the only lights within were those 
of candles which some penitent 
English had lit in Joan's honour on 
those same candlesticks.] The high 
altar was covered with floor-carpets; 
the pavement tiles were cracked and 
jarred out by the rubbish that had 
fallen from above, the floor was gritty 
with dust of glass and powdered stone, 
little twists of leading from the win- 
dows, and iron fragments. Two great 
doors had been blown inwards by the 
blast of a shell in the Archbishop's 
garden, till they had bent grotesquely 



46 FRANCE AT WAR 

to the curve of a cask. There they 
had jammed. The windows — but the 
record has been made, and will be kept 
by better hands than mine. It will 
last through the generation in which 
the Teuton is cut off from the fellow- 
ship of mankind — all the long, still 
years when this war of the body is 
at an end, and the real war begins. 
Rheims is but one of the altars which 
the heathen have put up to commem- 
orate their own death throughout all 
the world. It will serve. There is a 
mark, well known by now, which 
they have left for a visible seal of 
their doom. When they first set 
the place alight some hundreds of their 
wounded were being tended in the 
Cathedral. The French saved as many 
as they could, but some had to be left. 



FRANCE AT WAR 47 

Among them was a major, who lay 
with his back against a pillar. It 
has been ordained that the signs of 
his torments should remain — an out- 
line of both legs and half a body, 
printed in greasy black upon the 
stones. There are very many peo- 
ple who hope and pray that the sign 
will be respected at least by our chil- 
dren's children. 

IRON NERVE AND FAITH 

And, in the meantime, Rheims goes 
about what business it may have 
with that iron nerve and endurance 
and faith which is the new inheri- 
tance of France. There is agony 
enough when the big shells come in; 
there is pain and terror among the 
people; and always fresh desecration 



48 FRANCE AT WAR 

to watch and suffer. The old men 
and the women and the children 
drink of that cup daily, and yet the bit- 
terness does not enter into their 
souls. Mere words of admiration 
are impertinent, but the exquisite 
quality of the French soul has been 
the marvel to me throughout. They 
say themselves, when they talk: "We 
did not know what our nation was. 
Frankly, we did not expect it our- 
selves. But the thing came, and — you 
see, we go on." 

Or as a woman put it more logi- 
cally, **What else can we do.f* Re- 
member, we knew the Boche in '70 
when you did not. We know what 
he has done in the last year. This is 
not war. It is against wild beasts 
that we fight. There is no arrange- 



FRANCE AT WAR 40 

ment possible with wild beasts." 
This is the one vital point which we 
in England must realize. We are 
dealing with animals who have scien- 
tifically and philosophically removed 
themselves inconceivably outside civ- 
ilization. When you have heard a 
few — only a few — tales of their doings, 
you begin to understand a little. 
When you have seen Rheims, you 
understand a little more. When you 
have looked long enough at the faces 
of the women, you are inclined to 
think that the women will have a 
large say in the final judgment. They 
have earned it a thousand times. 



Ill 

BATTLE SPECTACLE AND 
A REVIEW 

Travelling with two chauffeurs is 
not the luxury it looks; since there 
is only one of you and there is always 
another of those iron men to relieve 
the wheel. Nor can I decide whether 
an ex-professor of the German tongue, 
or an ex-roadracer who has lived six 
years abroad, or a Marechal des Logis, 
or a Brigadier makes the most thrust- 
ing driver through three-mile stretches 
of military traJffic repeated at half -hour 
intervals. Sometimes it was motor- 
ambulances strung all along a level; or 

50 



FRANCE AT WAR 51 

supply; or those eternal big guns com- 
ing round corners with trees chained on 
their long backs to puzzle aeroplanes, 
and their leafy, big-shell limbers snort- 
ing behind them. In the rare breath- 
ing-spaces men with rollers and road 
metal attacked the road. In peace the 
roads of France, thanks to the motor, 
were none too good. In war they 
stand the incessant traffic far better 
than they did with the tourist. My 
impression — after some seven hundred 
miles printed off on me at between 60 
and 70 kilometres — was of uniform ex- 
cellence. Nor did I come upon any 
smashes or breakdowns in that dis- 
tance, and they were certainly trying 
them hard. Nor, which is the greater 
marvel, did we kill anybody; though we 
did miracles down the streets to avoid 



52 FRANCE AT WAU 

babes, kittens, and chickens. The 
hmd is nsed to every detail of war, 
and to its grime and horror and make- 
shifts, bnt also to war's unbonnded 
courtesy, kindness, and long-sutiVring, 
and the gaiety that comes, thank 
God, to bahuice overwhehning ma- 
terial loss. 

FARM LIFE AMIDST WAR 

There was a village that had been 
stamped flat, till it looked older than 
Pom[)eii. There were not three roofs 
left, nor one whole house. Tn most 
places you saw straight into the 
cellars. The hops were ripe in 
the grave-dotted tields round about. 
They had been brought in and piled 
in the nearest outline of a dwelling. 
Women sat on chairs on the pave- 



FRANCE AT WAR 53 

Trent, picking the good-smelling bun- 
dles. When they had finished one, 
they reached back and pulled out 
another through the window-hole be- 
hind them, talking and laughing the 
while. A cart had to be manoeuvred 
out of what had l)een a farmyard, 
to take the hops to market. A thick, 
broad, fair-haired wench, of the sort 
that Millet drew% flung all her weight 
on a spoke and brought the cart 
forward into the street. Then she 
shook herself, and, hands on hij)s, 
danced a little defiant jig in her sa- 
bots as she went back to get the horse. 
Another girl came across a bridge. 
She was precisely of the opposite type, 
slender, creamy-skinned, and deli- 
cate-featured. She carried a brand- 
new broom over her shoulder through 



54 FRANCE AT WAR 

that desolation, and bore herself with 
the pride and grace of Queen Iseult. 

The farm-girl came out leading the 
horse, and as the two young things 
passed they nodded and smiled at each 
other, with the delicate tangle of the 
hop-vines at their feet. 

The guns spoke earnestly in the 
north. That was the Argonne, where 
the Crown Prince was busily getting 
rid of a few thousands of his father's 
faithful subjects in order to secure 
himself the reversion of his father s 
throne. No man likes losing his 
job, and when at long last the inner 
history of this war comes to be 
written, we may find that the people 
we mistook for principals and prime 
agents were only average incompe- 
tents moviuir all Hell to avoid dis- 



FRANCE AT WAR o5 

missal. (For it is absoliitoly tnio 
that when a man sells his soul to 
the devil he does it for the price of 
lialf nothing.) 

WATCHING THE GUN-FIRE 

It must have been a hot fight. A 
village, wrecked as is usual along this 
line, opened on it from a hillside that 
overlooked an Italian landscape of 
carefully drawn hills studded with 
small villages — a plain with a 
road and a river in the foreground, 
and an all-revealing afternoon light 
upon everything. The hills smoked 
and shook and bellowed. An ob- 
servation-balloon climbed up to see; 
while an aeroplane which had nothing 
to do with the strife, but was merely 
training a beginner, ducked and 



56 FRANCE AT WAR 

swooped on the edge of the plain. 
Two rose-pink pillars of crumbled 
masonry, guarding some carefully 
trimmed evergreens on a lawn half bur- 
ied in rubbish, represented an hotel 
where the Crown Prince had once 
stayed. All up the hillside to our right 
the foundations of houses lay out, like a 
bit of tripe, with the sunshine in their 
square hollows. Suddenly a band be- 
gan to play up the hill among some 
trees; and an officer of local Guards in 
the new steel anti-shrapnel helmet, 
which is like the seventeenth century 
sallet, suggested that we should climb 
and get a better view. He was a kindly 
man, and in speaking English had 
discovered (as I do when speaking 
French) that it is simpler to stick 
to one gender. His choice was the 



FRANCE AT WAR 57 

feminine, and the Boche described 
as *'she" throughout made me think 
better of myself, which is the essence 
of friendship. We cHmbed a flight 
of old stone steps, for generations 
the playground of little children, and 
found a ruined church, and a bat- 
talion in billets, recreating them- 
selves with excellent music and a 
little horseplay on the outer edge of 
the crowd. The trouble in the hills 
was none of their business for that 
day. 

Still higher up, on a narrow path 
among the trees, stood a priest and 
three or four officers. They watched 
the battle and claimed the great 
bursts of smoke for one side or the 
other, at the same time as they kept 
an eye on the flickering aeroplane. 



58 FRANCE AT WAR 

"Ours," they said, half under their 
breath. "Theirs." "No, not ours 
that one — theirs! . . . That fool 
is banking too steep . . . That's 
Boche shrapnel. They always burst 
it high. That's our big gun behind 
that outer hill . . . He'll drop 
his machine in the street if he doesn't 
take care. . . . There goes a 
trench-sweeper. Those last two were 
theirs, but that''' — it was a full roar — 
"was ours." 

BEHIND THE GERMAN LINES 

The valley held and increased the 
sounds till they seemed to hit our 
hillside like a sea. 

A change of light showed a village, 
exquisitely pencilled atop of a hill, 
with reddish haze at its feet. 



FRANCE AT WAR 59 

"What is that place?" I asked. 

The priest repHed in a voice as 

deep as an organ: "That is Saint 

It is in the Boche lines. Its con- 
dition is pitiable." 

The thunders and the smokes rolled 
up and diminished and renewed them- 
selves, but the small children romped 
up and down the old stone steps; 
the beginner's aeroplane unsteadily 
chased its own shadow over the fields ; 
and the soldiers in billet asked the 
band for their favourite tunes. 

Said the lieutenant of local Guards 
as the cars went on: "She — play — 
Tipperary." 

And she did — to an accompani- 
ment of heavy pieces in the hills, 
which followed us into a town all 
ringed with enormous searchlights, 



60 FRANCE AT WAR 

French and Boche together, scowHng 
at each other beneath the stars. 

It happened about that time that 
Lord Kitchener with General Joffre 
reviewed a French Army Corps. 

We came on it in a vast dip of 
ground under grey clouds, as one 
comes suddenly on water; for it lay 
out in misty blue lakes of men mixed 
with darker patches, like osiers and 
undergrowth, of guns, horses, and 
wagons. A straight road cut the 
landscape in two along its murmur- 
ing front. 

VETERANS OF THE WAR 

It was as though Cadmus had sown 
the dragon's teeth, not in orderly 
furrows but broadcast, till, horrified 



FRANCE AT WAR 61 

by what arose, he had emptied out 
the whole bag and fled. But these 
were no new warriors. The record 
of their mere pitched battles would 
have satiated a Napoleon. Their 
regiments and batteries had learnt 
to achieve the impossible as a matter 
of routine, and in twelve months they 
had scarcely for a week lost direct 
contact with death. We went down 
the line and looked into the eyes of 
those men with the used bayonets 
and rifles; the packs that could almost 
stow themselves on the shoulders 
that would be strange without them; 
at the splashed guns on their repaired 
wheels, and the easy- working lim- 
bers. One could feel the strength 
and power of the mass as one feels 
the flush of heat from off a sunbaked 



Q'l FRANCE AT WAR 

wall. When the Generals' cars ar- 
rived there, there was no loud word 
or galloping about. The lakes of 
men gathered into straight-edged bat- 
talions; the batteries aligned a little; 
a squadron reined back or spurred 
up; but it was all as swiftly smooth 
as the certainty with which a man 
used to the pistol draws and levels 
it at the required moment. A few 
peasant women saw the Generals 
alight. The aeroplanes, which had 
been skimming low as swallows along 
the front of the line (theirs must have 
been a superb view) ascended lei- 
surely, and ''waited on" like hawks. 
Then followed the inspection, and 
one saw the two figures, tall and short, 
growing smaller side by side along 
the white road, till far off among the 



FRANCE AT WAR 63 

cavalry they entered their cars again, 
and moved along the horizon to an- 
other rise of grey -green plain. 

*'The army will move across where 
you are standing. Get to a flank," 
some one said. 

AN ARMY IN MOTION 

We were no more than well clear of 
that immobile host when it all surged 
forward, headed by massed bands 
playing a tune that sounded like the 
very pulse of France. 

The two Generals, with their Staff, 
and the French Minister for War, 
were on foot near a patch of very 
green lucerne. They made about 
twenty figures in all. The cars were 
little grey blocks against the grey 
skyline. There was nothing else in 



64 FRANCE AT WAR 

all that great plain except the army; 
no sound but the changing notes of 
the aeroplanes and the blunted im- 
pression, rather than noise, of feet 
of men on soft ground. They came 
over a slight ridge, so that one saw 
the curve of it first furred, then 
grassed, with the tips of bayonets, 
which immediately grew to full height, 
and then, beneath them, poured the 
wonderful infantry. The speed, the 
thrust, the drive of that broad blue 
mass was like a tide-race up an arm 
of the sea; and how such speed could 
go with such weight, and how such 
weight could be in itself so absolutely 
under control, filled one with terror. 
All the while, the band, on a far 
headland, was telling them and telling 
them (as if they did not know!) of 



FRANCE AT WAR 65 

the passion and gaiety and high heart 
of their own land in the speech that 
only they could fully understand. 
(To hear the music of a country is 
like hearing a woman think aloud.) 

"What is the tune?" I asked of an 
officer beside me. 

"My faith, I can't recall for the 
moment. I've marched to it often 
enough, though. *Sambre-et-Meuse,' 
perhaps. Look! There goes my bat- 
talion! Those Chasseurs yonder." 

He knew, of course; but what could 
a stranger identify in that earth- 
shaking passage of thirty thousand? 

ARTILLERY AND CAVALRY 

The note behind the ridge changed 
to something deeper. 

"Ah! Our guns," said an artillery 



66 FRANCE AT WAR 

officer, and smiled tolerantly on the 
last blue waves of the Line already 
beating toward the horizon. 

They came twelve abreast — one 
hundred and fifty guns free for the 
moment to take the air in company, 
behind their teams. And next week 
would see them, hidden singly or in 
lurking confederacies, by mountain 
and marsh and forest, or the wrecked 
habitations of men — where.^ 

The big guns followed them, with 
that long-nosed air of detachment 
peculiar to the breed. The Gunner 
at my side made no comment. He 
was content to let his Arm speak for 
itself, but when one big gun in a 
sticky place fell out of alignment 
for an instant I saw his eyebrows 
contract. The artillery passed on 



FRANCE AT WAR 67 

with the same inhuman speed and 
silence as the Line; and the Cavalry's 
shattering trumpets closed it all. 

They are like our Cavalry in that 
their horses are in high condition, 
and they talk hopefully of getting 
past the barbed wire one of these 
days and coming into their own. 
Meantime, they are employed on 
"various work as requisite," and 
they all sympathize with our rough- 
rider of Dragoons who flatly refused 
to take off his spurs in the trenches. 
If he had to die as a damned infantry- 
man, he wasn't going to be buried 
as such. A troop-horse of a flanking 
squadron decided that he had had 
enough of war, and jibbed like Lot's 
wife. His rider (we all watched him) 
ranged about till he found a stick, 



68 FRANCE AT WAR 

which he used, but without effect. 
Then he got off and led the horse, 
which was evidently what the brute 
wanted, for when the man remounted 
the jibbing began again. The last 
we saw of him was one immensely 
lonely figure leading one bad but 
happy horse across an absolutely 
empty world. Think of his reception 
— the sole man of 40,000 who had 
fallen out! 

THE BOCHE AS MR. SMITH 

The Commander of that Army 
Corps came up to salute. The cars 
went away with the Generals and the 
Minister for War; the Army passed 
out of sight over the ridges to the 
north; the peasant women stooped 
again to their work in the fields. 



FRANCE AT WAR 69 

and wet mist shut down on all the 
plain; but one tingled with the 
electricity that had passed. Now 
one knows what the solidarity of 
civilization means. Later on the civ- 
ilized nations will know more, and 
will wonder and laugh together at 
their old blindness. When Lord Kit- 
chener went do^vn the line, before 
the march past, they say that he 
stopped to speak to a General who 
had been Marchand's Chief of Staff 
at the time of Fashoda. And Fa- 
shoda was one of several cases when 
civilization was very nearly manoeu- 
vred into fighting with itself "for 
the King of Prussia," as the saying 
goes. The all-embracing vileness of 
the Boche is best realized from French 
soil, where they have had large expe- 



70 FRANCE AT WAR 

rience of it. "And yet," as some one 
observed, "we ought to have known 
that a race who have brought anony- 
mous letter-writing to its highest 
pitch in their own dirty Court affairs 
would certainly use the same methods 
in their foreign politics. Why didn't 
we realize.'^" 

"For the same reason," another 
responded, "that society did not 
realize that the late Mr. Smith, of 
your England, who married three 
wives, bought baths in advance for 
each of them, and, when they had 
left him all their money, drowned 
them one by one." 

"And were the baths by any chance 
called Denmark, Austria, and France 
in 1870.?" a third asked. 

"No, they were respectable British 



FRANCE AT WAR 71 

tubs. But until Mr. Smith had 
drowned his third wife people didn't 
get suspicious. They argued that 
*men don't do such things.' That 
sentiment is the criminal's best pro- 
tection." 



IV 

THE SPIRIT OF THE PEOPLE 

^Ye passed into the zone of another 
army and a hiUier country, where the 
border villages lay more sheltered. 
Here and there a town and the fields 
round it gave us a glimpse of the furi- 
ous industry with which France makes 
and handles material and troops. 
With her, as with us, the wounded 
officer of experience goes back to the 
drill-ground to train the new levies. 
But it was always the little crowded, 
defiant villages, and the civil popu- 
lation waiting unweariedly and cheer- 
fully on the unwearied, cheerful army. 



FRANCE AT WAR 73 

that went closest to the heart. Take 
these pictures, caught almost any- 
where during a journey: A knot of 
little children in difficulties with the 
village water-tap or high-handled 
pump. A soldier, bearded and fa- 
therly, or young and slim and there- 
fore rather shy of the big girls' chaff, 
comes forward and lifts the pail or 
swings the handle. His reward, from 
the smallest babe swung high in air, 
or, if he is an older man, pressed 
against his knees, is a kiss. Then 
nobody laughs. 

Or a fat old lady making oration 
against some wicked young soldiers 
who, she says, know what has hap- 
pened to a certain bottle of wine. 
"And I meant it for all — yes, for all 
of you — this evening, instead of the 



74 FRANCE AT WAR 

thieves who stole it. Yes, I tell you 
— stole it!" The whole street hears 
her; so does the officer, who pretends 
not to, and the amused half-battalion 
up the road. The young men express 
penitence; she growls like a thunder- 
storm, but, softening at last, cuffs 
and drives them affectionately before 
her. They are all one family. 

Or a girl at work with horses in a 
ploughed field that is dotted with 
graves. The machine must avoid 
each sacred plot. So, hands on the 
plough-stilts, her hair flying forward, 
she shouts and wrenches till her little 
brother runs up and swings the team 
out of the furrow. Every aspect 
and detail of life in France seems 
overlaid with a smooth patina of 
long-continued war — everything ex- 



FRANCE AT WAR 75 

cept the spirit of the people, and that 
is as fresh and glorious as the sight 
of their own land in sunshine. 

A CITY AND WOMAN 

We found a city among hills which 
knew itself to be a prize greatly 
coveted by the Kaiser. For, truly, 
it was a pleasant, a desirable, and 
an insolent city. Its streets were 
full of life; it boasted an establish- 
ment almost as big as Harrod's and 
full of buyers, and its women dressed 
and shod themselves with care and 
grace, as befits ladies who, at any 
time, may be ripped into rags by 
bombs from aeroplanes. And there 
was another city whose population 
seemed to be all soldiers in training; 
and yet another given up to big guns 



76 FRANCE AT WAR 

and ammunition — an extraordinary 
sight. 

After that, we came to a little town 
of pale stone which an Army had 
made its headquarters. It looked 
like a plain woman who had fainted 
in public. It had rejoiced in many 
public institutions that were turned 
into hospitals and offices; the 
wounded limped its wide, dusty 
streets, detachments of Infantry went 
through it swiftly; and utterly bored 
motor-lorries cruised up and down 
roaring, I suppose, for something to 
look at or to talk to. In the centre of 
it I found one Janny, or rather his 
marble bust, brooding over a minute 
iron-railed garden of half-dried asters 
opposite a shut-up school, which it 
appeared from the inscription Janny 



FRANCE AT WAR 77 

had founded somewhere in the arid 
Thirties. It was precisely the sort 
of school that Janny, by the look of 
him, would have invented. Not even 
French adaptability could make any- 
thing of it. So Janny had his school, 
with a faint perfume of varnish, all 
to himself in a hot stillness of used-up 
air and little whirls of dust. And 
because that town seemed so barren, 
I met there a French General whom 
I would have gone very far to have 
encountered. He, like the others, 
had created and tempered an army 
for certain work in a certain place, 
and its hand had been heavy on the 
Boche. We talked of what the 
French woman was, and had done, 
and was doing, and extolled her for 
her goodness and her faith and her 



78 FRANCE AT WAR 

splendid courage. When we parted, 
I went back and made my profound- 
est apologies to Janny, who must 
have had a mother. The pale, over- 
whelmed town did not now any 
longer resemble a woman who had 
fainted, but one who must endure in 
public all manner of private woe and 
still, with hands that never cease 
working, keeps her soul and is cleanly 
strong for herself and for her men. 

FRENCH OFFICERS 

The guns began to speak again 
among the hills that we dived into; 
the air grew chillier as we climbed; 
forest and wet rocks closed round us 
in the mist, to the sound of waters 
trickling alongside; there was a tang 
of wet fern, cut pine, and the first 



FRANCE AT WAR 79 

breath of autumn when the road 
entered a tunnel and a new world — 
Alsace. 

Said the Governor of those parts 
thoughtfully: "The main thing was to 
get those factory chimneys smoking 
again." (They were doing so in little 
flats and villages all along.) "You 
won't see any girls, because they're at 
work in the textile factories. Yes, it 
isn't a bad country for summer hotels, 
but I'm afraid it won't do for winter 
sports. We've only a metre of snow, 
and it doesn't lie, except when you 
are hauling guns up mountains. Then, 
of course, it drifts and freezes like 
Davos. That's our new railway be- 
low there. Pity it's too misty to see 
the view." 

But for his medals, there was 



80 FRANCE AT WAR 

nothing in the Governor to show that 
he was not English. He might have 
come straight from an Indian frontier 
command. 

One notices this approximation of 
type in the higher ranks, and many of 
the juniors are cut out of the very same 
cloth as ours. They get whatever 
fun may be going: their perform- 
ances are as incredible and outrage- 
ous as the language in which they 
describe them afterward is bald, but 
convincing, and — I overheard the 
tail-end of a yarn told by a child 
of twenty to some other babes. It 
was veiled in the obscurity of the 
French tongue, and the points were 
lost in shouts of laughter — but I 
imagine the subaltern among his 
equals displays just as much rever- 



FRANCE AT WAR 81 

ence for his elders and betters as our 
own boys do. The epilogue, at least, 
was as old as both Armies : 

"And what did he say then?" 
"Oh, the usual thing. He held his 
breath till I thought he'd burst. 
Then he damned me in heaps, and I 
took good care to keep out of his 
sight till next day." 

But officially and in the high social 
atmosphere of Headquarters their 
manners and their meekness are of 
the most admirable. There they at- 
tend devoutly on the wisdom of their 
seniors, who treat them, so it seemed, 
with affectionate confidence. 

FRONT THAT NEVER SLEEPS 

When the day's reports are in, all 
along the front, there is a man, expert 



82 FRANCE AT WAR 

in the meaning of things, who boils 
them down for that cold official di- 
gest which tells us that "There was 

the usual grenade fighting at . 

We made appreciable advance at 

," &c. The original material 

comes in sheaves and sheaves, where 
individual character and tempera- 
ment have full and amusing play. 
It is reduced for domestic consump- 
tion like an overwhelming electric 
current. Otherwise we could not 
take it in. But at closer range one 
realizes that the Front never sleeps; 
never ceases from trying new ideas 
and weapons which, so soon as the 
Boche thinks he has mastered them, 
are discarded for newer annoyances 
and bewilderments. 

"The Boche is above all things ob- 



FRANCE AT WAR 83 

servant and imitative," said one who 
counted quite a few Boches dead on 
the front of his sector. "When you 
present him with a new idea, he 
thinks it over for a day or two. 
Then he presents his riposte." 

"Yes, my General. That was ex- 
actly what he did to me when I — 
did so and so. He was quite silent 
for a day. Then — he stole my pat- 
ent." 

"And you?" 

"I had a notion that he'd do that, 
so I had changed the specification." 

Thus spoke the Staff, and so it is 
among the junior commands, down to 
the semi-isolated posts where boy- 
Napoleons live on their own, through 
unbelievable adventures. They are 
inventive young devils, these veterans 



84 FRANCE AT WAR 

of 21, possessed of the single ideal — 
to kill — which they follow with men 
as single-minded as themselves. Bat- 
tlefield tactics do not exist; when 
a whole nation goes to ground there 
can be none of the "victories" of the 
old bookish days. But there is al- 
ways the killing — the well-schemed 
smashing of a full trench, the rushing 
out and the mowing down of its 
occupants; the unsuspicious battalion 
far in the rear, located after two 
nights' extreme risk alone among rub- 
bish of masonry, and wiped out as it 
eats or washes itself; and, more rarely, 
the body to body encounter with 
animals removed from the protection 
of their machinery, when the bayonets 
get their chance. The Boche does 
not at all like meetinsj men whose 



FRANCE AT WAR 85 

womenfolk he has dishonoured or 
mutilated, or used as a protection 
against bullets. It is not that these 
men are angry or violent. They do 
not waste time in that way. They 
kill him. 

THE BUSINESS OF WAR 

The French are less reticent than 
we about atrocities committed by the 
Boche, because those atrocities form 
part of their lives. They are not 
tucked away in reports of Commis- 
sions, and vaguely referred to as "too 
awful." Later on, perhaps, we shall 
be unreserved in our turn. But they 
do not talk of them with any bab- 
bling heat or bleat or make funny 
little appeals to a "public opinion" 
that, like the Boche, has gone under- 



86 FRANCE AT WAR 

ground. It occurs to me that this 
must be because every Frenchman 
has his place and his chance, direct 
or indirect, to diminish the number 
of Boches still alive. Whether he lies 
out in a sandwich of damp earth, 
or sweats the big guns up the crests 
behind the trees, or brings the fat, 
loaded barges into the very heart of 
the city, where the shell-wagons w^ait, 
or spends his last crippled years at the 
harvest, he is doing his work to that 
end. 

If he is a civilian he may — as he 
does — say things about his Govern- 
ment, which, after all, is very like 
other popular governments. (A life- 
time spent in watching how the cat 
jumps does not make lion-tamers.) 
But there is very little human rub- 



FRANCE AT WAR 87 

bish knocking about France to hinder 
work or darken counsel. Above all, 
there is a thing called the Honour 
of Civihzation, to which France is 
attached. The meanest man feels 
that he, in his place, is permitted 
to help uphold it, and, I think, bears 
himself, therefore, with new dignity. 

A CONTRAST IN TYPES 

This is written in a garden of 
smooth turf, under a copper beech, 
beside a glassy mill-stream, where sol- 
diers of Alpine regiments are writing 
letters home, while the guns shout up 
and down the narrow valleys. 

A great wolf-hound, who considers 
himself in charge of the old-fashioned 
farmhouse, cannot understand why 
his master, aged six, should be sitting 



88 FRANCE AT WAR 

on the knees of the Marechal des 
Logis, the iron man who drives the 
big car. 

"But you are French, Httle one?" 
says the giant, with a yearning arm 
round the child. 

"Yes," very slowly mouthing the 
French words; "I — can't — speak — 
French — but — I — am — French." 

The small face disappears in the 
big beard. 

Somehow, I can't imagine the 
Marechal des Logis killing babies — 
even if his superior officer, now sketch- 
ing the scene, were to order him! 

The great building must once have 
been a monastery. Twilight soft- 
ened its gaunt wings, in an angle of 
which were collected fifty prisoners. 



FRANCE AT WAR 89 

picked up among the hills behind 
the mists. 

They stood in some sort of mili- 
tary formation preparatory to being 
marched off. They were dressed in 
khaki, the colour of gassed grass, 
that might have belonged to any 
army. Two wore spectacles, and I 
counted eight faces of the fifty which 
were asymmetrical — out of drawing 
on one side. 

"Some of their later drafts give us 
that type," said the Interpreter. 
One of them had been wounded in the 
head and roughly bandaged. The 
others seemed all sound. Most of 
them looked at nothing, but several 
were vividly alive with terror that 
cannot keep the eyelids still, and a few 
wavered on the grey edge of collapse. 



90 FRANCE AT WAR 

They were the breed which, at the 
word of command, had stolen out to 
drown women and children; had 
raped women in the streets at the 
word of command; and, always at 
the word of command, had sprayed 
petrol, or squirted flame; or defiled 
the property and persons of their 
captives. They stood there outside 
all humanity. Yet they were made 
in the likeness of humanity. One 
realized it with a shock when the band- 
aged creature began to shiver, and 
they shuffled off in response to the 
orders of civilized men. 



LIFE IN TRENCHES ON THE 
MOUNTAIN SIDE 

Very early in the morning I met 
Alan Breck, with a half-healed bullet- 
scrape across the bridge of his nose, 
and an Alpine cap over one ear. 
His people a few hundred years ago 
had been Scotch. He bore a Scotch 
name, and still recognized the head 
of his clan, but his French occasion- 
ally ran into German words, for he 
was an Alsatian on one side. 

"This," he explained, "is the very 
best country in the world to fight in. 
It's picturesque and full of cover. I'm 

91 



92 FRANCE AT WAR 

a gunner. I've been here for months. 
It's lovely." 

It might have been the hills under 
Mussoorie, and what our cars ex- 
pected to do in it I could not under- 
stand. But the demon-driver who 
had been a road-racer took the 70 
h. p. Mercedes and threaded the nar- 
row valleys, as well as occasional half- 
Swiss villages full of Alpine troops, 
at a restrained thirty miles an 
hour. He shot up a new-made road, 
more like Mussoorie than ever, and 
did not fall down the hillside even 
once. An ammunition-mule of a 
mountain-battery met him at a tight 
corner, and began to climb a 
tree. 

"See! There isn't another place 
in France where that could happen," 



FRANCE AT WAR 93 

said Alan. "I tell you, this is a 
magnificent country." 

The mule was hauled down by his 
tail before he had reached the lower 
branches, and went on through the 
woods, his ammunition-boxes jinking 
on his back, for all the world as 
though he were rejoining his battery 
at Jutogh. One expected to meet the 
little Hill people bent under their loads 
under the forest gloom. The light, the 
colour, the smell of wood smoke, pine- 
needles, wet earth, and warm mule were 
all Himalayan. Only the Mercedes 
was violently and loudly a stranger. 

"Halt!" said Alan at last, when 
she had done everything except imi- 
tate the mule. 

"The road continues," said the 
demon-driver seductively. 



94 FRANCE AT WAR 

"Yes, but they will hear you if you 
go on. Stop and wait. We've a 
mountain battery to look at." 

They were not at work for the 
moment, and the Commandant, a 
grim and forceful man, showed me 
some details of their construction. 
When we left them in their bower — 
it looked like a Hill priest's wayside 
shrine — we heard them singing 
through the steep-descending pines. 
They, too, like the 75's, seem to have 
no pet name in the service. 

It was a poisonously blind country. 
The woods blocked all sense of direc- 
tion above and around. The ground 
was at any angle you please, and all 
sounds were split up and muddled 
by the tree-trunks, which acted as 
silencers. High above us the re- 



FRANCE AT WAR 95 

spectable, all-concealing forest had 
turned into sparse, ghastly blue sticks 
of timber — an assembly of leper- 
trees round a bald mountain top. 
"That's where we're going," said 
Alan. "Isn't it an adorable coun- 
try?" 

TRENCHES 

A machine-gun loosed a few shots in 
the fumbling style of her kind when 
they feel for an opening. A couple 
of rifle shots answered. They might 
have been half a mile away or a hun- 
dred yards below. An adorable coun- 
try! We climbed up till we found 
once again a complete tea-garden of 
little sunk houses, almost invisible 
in the brown-pink recesses of the 
thick forest. Here the trenches be- 
gan, and with them for the next few 



96 FRANCE AT WAR 

hours life in two dimensions — length 
and breadth. You could have eaten 
your dinner almost anywhere off the 
swept dry ground, for the steep slopes 
favoured draining, there was no lack 
of timber, and there was unlimited 
labour. It had made neat double- 
length dug-outs where the wounded 
could be laid in during their pas- 
sage down the mountain side; well- 
tended occasional latrines properly 
limed; dug-outs for sleeping and 
eating; overhead protections and tool- 
sheds where needed, and, as one came 
nearer the working face, very clever 
cellars against trench-sweepers. Men 
passed on their business ; a squad with 
a captured machine-gun which they 
tested in a sheltered dip; armourers 
at their benches busy with sick rifles; 



FRANCE AT WAR 97 

fatigue-parties for straw, rations, and 
ammunition; long processions of sin- 
gle blue figures turned sideways be- 
tween the brown sunless walls. One 
understood after a while the night- 
mare that lays hold of trench-stale 
men, when the dreamer wanders for 
ever in those blind mazes till, after 
centuries of agonizing flight, he finds 
himself stumbling out again into the 
white blaze and horror of the mined 
front — he who thought he had al- 
most reached home ! 

IN THE FRONT LINE. 

There were no trees above us now. 
Their trunks lay along the edge of the 
trench, built in with stones, where 
necessary, or sometimes overhanging 
it in ragged splinters or bushy tops. 



98 FRANCE AT WAR 

Bits of cloth, not French, showed, too, 
in the uneven lines of debris at the 
trench lip, and some thoughtful soul 
had marked an unexploded Boche 
trench-sweeper as " not to be touched." 
It was a young lawyer from Paris who 
pointed that out to me. 

We met the Colonel at the head of 
an indescribable pit of ruin, full of 
sunshine, whose steps ran down a 
very steep hillside under the lee of 
an almost vertically plunging para- 
pet. To the left of that parapet the 
whole hillside was one gruel of 
smashed trees, split stones, and pow- 
dered soil. It might have been a rag- 
picker's dump-heap on a colossal scale. 

Alan looked at it critically. I 
think he had helped to make it not 
long before. 



FRANCE AT WAR 99 

" We're on the top of the hill now, and 
the Bochesare below us," said he. *' We 
gave them a very fair sickener lately." 

"This," said the Colonel, "is the 
front line. 

There were overhead guards against 
hand-bombs which disposed me to be- 
lieve him, but what convinced me 
most was a corporal urging us in 
whispers not to talk so loud. The 
men were at dinner, and a good smell 
of food filled the trench. This was 
the first smell I had encountered in 
my long travels uphill — a mixed, en- 
tirely wholesome flavour of stew, 
leather, earth, and rifle-oil. 

FRONT LINE PROFESSIONALS 

A proportion of men were standing 
to arms while others ate; but dinner- 



100 FRANCE AT WAR 

time is slack time, even among ani- 
mals, and it was close on noon. 

"The Boches got their soup a few 
days ago," some one whispered. I 
thought of the pulverized hillside, 
and hoped it had been hot enough. 

We edged along the still trench, 
where the soldiers stared, with justi- 
fied contempt, I thought, upon the 
civilian who scuttled through their 
life for a few emotional minutes in 
order to make words out of their 
blood. Somehow it reminded me of 
coming in late to a play and incom- 
moding a long line of packed stalls. 
The whispered dialogue was much 
the same: *' Pardon!" "I beg your 
pardon, monsieur." "To the right, 
monsieur." "If monsieur will lower 
his head." " One sees best from here. 



FRANCE AT WAR 101 

monsieur," and so on. It was their 
day and night-long business, carried 
through without display or heat, or 
doubt or indecision. Those who 
worked, worked; those off duty, not 
five feet behind them in the dug-outs, 
were deep in their papers, or theirmeals 
or their letters ; while death stood ready 
at every minute to drop down into the 
narrow cut from out of the narrow strip 
of unconcerned sky. And for the bet- 
ter part of a week one had skirted 
hundreds of miles of such a frieze ! 

The loopholes not in use were 
plugged rather like old-fashioned 
hives. Said the Colonel, removing 
a plug: "Here are the Boches. Look, 
and you'll see their sandbags." 
Through the jumble of riven trees 
and stones one saw what might have 



102 FRANCE AT WAR 

been a bit of green sacking. *' They're 
about seven metres distant just here," 
the Colonel went on. That was 
true, too. We entered a little forta- 
lice with a cannon in it, in an em- 
brasure which at that moment struck 
me as unnecessarily vast, even though 
it was partly closed by a frail pack- 
ing-case lid. The Colonel sat him 
down in front of it, and explained the 
theory of this sort of redoubt. "By 
the way," he said to the gunner at 
last, "can't you find something bet- 
ter than that?'' He twitched the 
lid aside. "I think it's too light. 
Get a log of wood or something." 

HANDY TRENCH-SWEEPERS 

I loved that Colonel ! He knew his 
men and he knew the Boches — had 



FRANCE AT WAR 103 

them marked down like birds. When 
he said they were beside dead trees 
or behind boulders, sure enough there 
they were! But, as I have said, the 
dinner-hour is always slack, and even 
when we came to a place where a sec- 
tion of trench had been bashed open 
by trench-sweepers, and it was re- 
commended to duck and hurry, noth- 
ing much happened. The uncanny 
thing was the absence of movement 
in the Boche trenches. Sometimes 
one imagined that one smelt strange 
tobacco, or heard a rifle-bolt working 
after a shot. Otherwise they were 
as still as pig at noonday. 

We held on through the maze, past 
trench-sweepers of a handy light pat- 
tern, with their screw- tailed charge 
all ready; and a grave or so; and when 



104 FRANCE AT WAR 

I came on men who merely stood 
within easy reach of their rifles, I 
knew I was in the second Hne. When 
they lay frankly at ease in their dug- 
outs, I knew it was the third. A shot- 
gun would have sprinkled all three. 

"No flat plains," said Alan. "No 
hunting for gun positions — the hills 
are full of them — and the trenches 
close together and commanding each 
other. You see what a beautiful 
country it is." 

The Colonel confirmed this, but 
from another point of view. War 
was his business, as the still woods 
could testify — but his hobby was 
his trenches. He had tapped the 
mountain streams and dug out a 
laundry where a man could wash his 
shirt and go up and be killed in it. 



FRANCE AT WAR 105 

all in a morning; had drained the 
trenches till a muddy stretch in them 
was an offence; and at the bottom of 
the hill (it looked like a hydropathic 
establishment on the stage) he had 
created baths where half a battalion 
at a time could wash. He never told 
me how all that country had been 
fought over as fiercely as Ypres in 
the West; nor what blood had gone 
down the valleys before his trenches 
pushed over the scalped mountain 
top. No. He sketched out new en- 
deavours in earth and stones and 
trees for the comfort of his men on 
that populous mountain. 

And there came a priest, who was a 
sub-lieutenant, out of a wood of snuff- 
brown shadows and half -veiled trunks. 
Would it please me to look at a chapel .^^ 



106 FRANCE AT WAR 

It was all open to the hillside, most 
tenderly and devoutly done in rustic 
work with reedings of peeled branches 
and panels of moss and thatch — St. 
Hubert's own shrine. I saw the 
hunters who passed before it, going 
to the chase on the far side of the 
mountain where their game lay. 

A BOMBARDED TOWN 

Alan carried me off to tea the same 
evening in a town where he seemed 
to know everybody. He had spent 
the afternoon on another mountain 
top, inspecting gun positions; whereby 
he had been shelled a little — mar- 
mite is the slang for it. There had 
been no serious marmitage, and he 
had spotted a Boche position which 
was marmitable. 



FRANCE AT WAR 107 

"And we may get shelled now," 
he added, hopefully. *'They shell 
this town whenever they think of it. 
Perhaps they'll shell us at tea." 

It was a quaintly beautiful little 
place, with its mixture of French and 
German ideas; its old bridge and 
gentle-minded river, between the cul- 
tivated hills. The sand-bagged cellar 
doors, the ruined houses, and the holes 
in the pavement looked as unreal as 
the violences of a cinema against 
that soft and simple setting. The 
people were abroad in the streets, 
and the little children were playing. 
A big shell gives notice enough for 
one to get to shelter, if the shelter is 
near enough. That appears to be as 
much as any one expects in the world 
where one is shelled, and that world 



108 FRANCE AT WAR 

has settled down to it. People's lips 
are a little firmer, the modelling of 
the brows is a little more pronounced, 
and, maybe, there is a change in the 
expression of the eyes; but nothing 
that a casual afternoon caller need 
particularly notice. 

CASES FOR HOSPITAL 

The house where we took tea was 
the "big house" of the place, old 
and massive, a treasure house of 
ancient furniture. It had everything 
that the moderate heart of man could 
desire — gardens, garages, outbuild- 
ings, and the air of peace that goes 
with beauty in age. It stood over a 
high cellarage, and opposite the cellar 
door was a brand-new blindage of 
earth packed between timbers. The 



FRANCE AT WAR 109 

cellar was a hospital, with its beds and 
stores, and under the electric light the 
orderly waited ready for the cases to 
be carried down out of the streets. 
"Yes, they are all civil cases," said 

he. 

They come without much warning 
— a woman gashed by falling timber; 
a child with its temple crushed by a 
flying stone; an urgent amputation 
case, and so on. One never knows. 
Bombardment, the Boche text-books 
say, "is designed to terrify the civil 
population so that they may put 
pressure on their politicians to con- 
clude peace." In real life, men are 
very rarely soothed by the sight of 
their women being tortured. 

We took tea in the hall upstairs, 
with a propriety and an interchange 



110 FRANCE AT WAR 

of compliments that suited the little 
occasion. There was no attempt to 
disguise the existence of a bombard- 
ment, but it was not allowed to over- 
weigh talk of lighter matters. I 
know one guest who sat through it 
as near as might be inarticulate with 
wonder. But he was English, and 
when Alan asked him whether he 
had enjoyed himself, he said: "Oh, 
yes. Thank you very much." 

"Nice people, aren't they?" Alan 
went on. 

"Oh, very nice. And — and such 
good tea." 

He managed to convey a few of his 
sentiments to Alan after dinner. 

"But what else could the people 
have done?" said he. "They are 
French." 



VI 

THE COMMON TASK OF A 
GREAT PEOPLE 

"This is the end of the line," said 
the Staff Officer, kindest and most 
patient of chaperons. It buttressed 
itself on a fortress among hills. Be- 
yond that, the silence was more aw- 
ful than the mixed noise of business 
to the westward. In mileage on the 
map the line must be between four 
and five hundred miles; in actual 
trench-work many times that dis- 
tance. It is too much to see at full 
length; the mind does not readily 
break away from the obsession of its 
111 



112 FRANCE AT WAR 

entirety or the grip of its detail. One 
visualizes the thing afterwards as a 
white-hot gash, worming all across 
France between intolerable sounds 
and lights, under ceaseless blasts of 
whirled dirt. Nor is it any relief to 
lose oneself among w^ildernesses of 
piling, stoning, timbering, concreting, 
and w^ire-w^ork, or incalculable quan- 
tities of soil thrown up raw to the 
light and cloaked by the changing 
seasons — as the unburied dead are 
cloaked. 

Yet there are no words to give the 
essential simplicity of it. It is the 
rampart put up by Man against the 
Beast, precisely as in the Stone Age. 
If it goes, all that keeps us from the 
Beast goes with it. One sees this at 
the front as clearly as one sees the 



FRANCE AT WAR 113 

French villages behind the German 
lines. Sometimes people steal away 
from them and bring word of what 
they endure. 

Where the rifle and the bayonet 
serve, men use those tools along the 
front. Where the knife gives better 
results, they go in behind the hand- 
grenades with the naked twelve-inch 
knife. Each race is supposed to 
fight in its own way, but this war 
has passed beyond all the known 
ways. They say that the Belgians 
in the north settle accounts with a 
certain dry passion which has varied 
very little since their agony began. 
Some sections of the English line have 
produced a soft-voiced, rather re- 
served type, which does its work with 
its mouth shut. The French carry 



114 FRANCE AT WAR 

an edge to their fighting, a precision, 
and a dreadful knowledge coupled 
with an insensibility to shock, unlike 
anything one has imagined of man- 
kind. To be sure, there has never 
been like provocation, for never since 
the JEsir went about to bind the 
Fenris Wolf has all the world united 
to bind the Beast. 

The last I saw of the front was 
Alan Breck speeding back to his gun- 
positions among the mountains; and 
I wondered what delight of what 
household the lad must have been 
in the old days. 

SUPPORTS AND RESERVES 

Then we had to work our way, de- 
partment by department, against the 
tides of men behind the line — sup- 



FRANCE AT WAR 115 

ports and their supports, reserves and 
reserves of reserves, as well as the 
masses in training. They flooded 
towns and villages, and when we tried 
short-cuts we found them in every 
by-lane. Have you seen mounted 
men reading their home letters with 
the reins thrown on the horses' necks, 
moving in absorbed silence through 
a street which almost said "Hush!" 
to its dogs; or met, in a forest, a pro- 
cession of perfectly new big guns, 
apparently taking themselves from 
the foundry to the front .^ 

In spite of their love of drama, there 
is not much "window-dressing" in 
the French character. The Boche, 
who is the priest of the Higher 
Counter-jumpery, would have had 
half the neutral Press out in cars to 



116 FRANCE AT WAR 

advertise these vast spectacles ol 
men and material. But the same 
instinct as makes their rich farmers 
keep to their smocks makes the 
French keep quiet. 

"This is our affair," they argue. 
"Everybody concerned is taking part 
in it. Like the review you saw the 
other day, there are no spectators." 

"But it might be of advantage if 
the world knew." 

Mine was a foolish remark. There 
is only one world to-day, the world of 
the Allies. Each of them knows 
what the others are doing and — tlic 
rest doesn't matter. This is a curious 
but delightful fact to realize at first 
hand. And think what it will be 
later, when we shall all circulate 
among each other and open our hearts 



FRANCE AT WAR 117 

and talk it over in a brotherhood 
more intimate than the ties of blood! 
I lay that night at a little French 
town, and was kept awake by a man, 
somewhere in the hot, still darkness, 
howling aloud from the pain of his 
wounds. I was glad that he was 
alone, for when one man gives way 
the others sometimes follow. Yet 
the single note of misery was worse 
than the baying and gulping of a 
whole ward. I wished that a dele- 
gation of strikers could have heard it. 

That a civilian should be in the 
war zone at all is a fair guarantee of 
his good faith. It is when he is 
outside the zone unchaperoned that 
questions begin, and the permits are 
looked into. If these are irregular — 



118 FRANCE AT WAR 

but one doesn't care to contemplate 
it. If regular, there are still a few 
counter-checks. As the sergeant at 
the railway station said when he 
helped us out of an impasse: "You 
will realize that it is the most undesir- 
able persons whose papers are of the 
most regular. It is their business 
you see. The Commissary of Police 
is at the Hotel de Ville, if you will 
come along for the little formality. 
Myself, I used to keep a shop in Paris. 
My God, these provincial towns are 
desolating!" 

PARIS — AND NO FOREIGNERS 

He would have loved his Paris as 
we found it. Life was renewing it- 
self in the streets, whose drawing and 
proportion one could never notice 



FRANCE AT WAR 119 

before. People's eyes, and the wo- 
men's especially, seemed to be set to a 
longer range, a more comprehensive 
gaze. One would have said they 
came from the sea or the mountains, 
where things are few and simple, 
rather than from houses. Best of 
all, there were no foreigners — the be- 
loved city for the first time was French 
throughout from end to end. It felt 
like coming back to an old friend's 
house for a quiet talk after he had 
got rid of a houseful of visitors. The 
functionaries and police had dropped 
their masks of official politeness, and 
were just friendly. At the hotels, so 
like school two days before the term 
begins, the impersonal valet, the 
chambermaid of the set two-franc 
smile, and the unbending head-waiter 



120 FRANCE AT WAR 

had given place to one's own brothers 
and sisters, full of one's own anxieties. 
"My son is an aviator, monsieur. 
I could have claimed Italian nation- 
ality for him at the beginning, but 
he would not have it." . . . 
"Both my brothers, monsieur, are 
at the war. One is dead already. 
And my fiance, I have not heard from 
him since March. He is cook in a 
battalion." . . . "Here is the 
wine-list, monsieur. Yes, both my 
sons and a nephew, and — I have no 
news of them, not a word of news. 
My God, we all suffer these days." 
And so, too, among the shops — the 
mere statement of the loss or the grief 
at the heart, but never a word of 
doubt, never a whimper of despair. 
"Now why," asked a shopkeeper. 



FRANCE AT WAR 121 

"does not our Government, or your 
Government, or both our Govern- 
ments, send some of the British 
Army to Paris? I assure you we 
should make them welcome." 

"Perhaps," I began, "you might 
make them too welcome." 

Pie laughed. "We should make 
them as welcome as our own army. 
They would enjoy themselves." I 
had a vision of British officers, each 
with ninety days' pay to his credit, 
and a damsel or two at home, shop- 
ping consumedly. 

"And also," said the shopkeeper, 
"the moral effect on Paris to see more 
of your troops would be very good." 

But I saw a quite English Pro- 
vost-Marshal losing himself in chase 
of defaulters of the New Army who 



122 FRANCE AT WAR 

knew their Paris! Still, there is 
something to be said for the idea — 
to the extent of a virtuous brigade or 
so. At present, the English officer 
in Paris is a scarce bird, and he ex- 
plains at once why he is and what he 
is doing there. He must have good 
reasons. I suggested teeth to an 
acquaintance. "No good," he grum- 
bled. *'They Ve thought of that, 
too. Behind our lines is simply 
crawling with dentists now!" 

A PEOPLE TRANSFIGURED 

If one asked after the people that 
gave dinners and dances last year, 
where every one talked so brilliantly 
of such vital things, one got in return 
the addresses of hospitals. Those 
pleasant hostesses and maidens seemed 



FRANCE AT WAR 123 

to be in charge of departments 
or on duty in wards, or kitchens, or 
sculleries. Some of the hospitals were 
in Paris. (Their staffs might have 
one hour a day in which to see visi- 
tors.) Others were up the line, and 
liable to be shelled or bombed. 

I recalled one Frenchwoman in 
particular, because she had once ex- 
plained to me the necessities of civil- 
ized life. These included a masseuse, 
a manicurist, and a maid to look 
after the lapdogs. She is employed 
now, and has been for months past, 
on the disinfection and repair of sol- 
diers' clothes. There was no need 
to ask after the men one had known. 
Still, there was no sense of desolation. 
They had gone on; the others were 
getting ready. 



124 FRANCE AT WAR 

All France works outward to the 
Front — precisely as an endless chain 
of fire-buckets works toward the 
conflagration. Leave the fire behind 
you and go back till you reach the 
source of supplies. You will find 
no break, no pause, no apparent 
haste, but never any slackening. 
Everybody has his or her bucket, 
little or big, and nobody disputes 
how they should be used. It is a 
people possessed of the precedent and 
tradition of war for existence, accus- 
tomed to hard living and hard labour, 
sanely economical by temperament, 
logical by training, and illumined 
and transfigured by their resolve and 
endurance. 

You know, when supreme trial 
overtakes an acquaintance whom till 



FRANCE AT WAR 125 

then we conceived we knew, how the 
man's nature sometimes changes past 
knowledge or behef. He who was 
altogether such an one as ourselves 
goes forward simply, even lightly, 
to heights we thought unattainable. 
Though he is the very same comrade 
that lived our small life with us, yet 
in all things he has become great. 
So it is with France to-day. She has 
discovered the measure of her soul. 

THE NEW WAR 

One sees this not alone in the — it is 
more than contempt of death — in the 
godlike preoccupation of her people 
under arms which makes them put 
death out of the account, but in the 
equal passion and fervour with which 
her people throughout give them- 



126 FRANCE AT WAR 

selves to the smallest as well as the 
greatest tasks that may in any way 
serve their sword. I might tell you 
something that I saw of the cleaning 
out of certain latrines; of the educa- 
tion and antecedents of the cleaners; 
what they said in the matter and how 
perfectly the work was done. There 
was a little Rabelais in it, naturally, 
but the rest was pure devotion, re- 
joicing to be of use. 

Similarly with stables, barricades, 
and barbed-wire work, the clearing 
and piling away of wrecked house- 
rubbish, the serving of meals till the 
service rocks on its poor tired feet, 
but keeps its temper; and all the un- 
lovely, monotonous details that go 
with war. 

The women, as I have tried to show, 



FRANCE AT WAR 127 

work stride for stride with the men, 
with hearts as resolute and a spirit 
that has little mercy for short- 
comings. A woman takes her place 
wherever she can relieve a man — 
in the shop, at the posts, on the 
tramways, the hotels, and a thousand 
other businesses. She is inured to 
field-work, and half the harvest of 
France this year lies in her lap. One 
feels at every turn how her men trust 
her. She knows, for she shares 
everything with her world, what has 
befallen her sisters who are now in Ger- 
man hands, and her soul is the undy- 
ing flame behind the men's steel. 
Neither men nor women have any 
illusion as to miracles presently to be 
performed which shall "sweep out" 
or "drive back" the Boche. Since 



128 FRANCE AT WAR 

the Army is the Nation, they know 
much, though they are officially told 
little. They all recognize that the 
old-fashioned "victory" of the past 
is almost as obsolete as a rifle in a 
front-line trench. They all accept 
the new war, which means grinding 
down and wearing out the enemy by 
every means and plan and device that 
can be compassed. It is slow and ex- 
pensive, but as deadly sure as the logic 
that leads them to make it their one 
work, their sole thought, their single 
preoccupation. 

A nation's confidence 

The same logic saves them a vast 
amount of energy. They knew Ger- 
many in '70, when the world would 
not believe in their knowledge; they 



FRANCE AT WAR 129 

knew the German mind before the 
war; they know what she has done 
(they have photographs) during this 
war. They do not fall into spasms of 
horror and indignation over atroci- 
ties "that cannot be mentioned," 
as the English papers say. They 
mention them in full and book them 
to the account. They do not discuss, 
nor consider, nor waste an emotion 
over anything that Germany says or 
boasts or argues or implies or intrigues 
after. They have the heart's ease 
that comes from all being at work for 
their country; the knowledge that 
the burden of work is equally dis- 
tributed among all; the certainty that 
the women are working side by side 
with the men; the assurance that 
when one man's task is at the 



130 FRANCE AT WAR 

moment ended, another takes his 

place. 

Out of these things is born their 
power of recuperation in their leisure; 
their reasoned calm while at work; 
and their superb confidence in their 
arms. Even if France of to-day 
stood alone against the world's enemy, 
it would be almost inconceivable to 
imagine her defeat now; wholly so 
to imagine any surrender. The war 
will go on till the enemy is finished. 
The French do not know when that 
hour will come; they seldom speak of 
it; they do not amuse themselves 
with dreams of triumphs or terms. 
Their business is war, and they do 
their business. 

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITV, NEW YORK 



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